This invention relates to hot air furnaces and more particularly it concerns a unique atmospheric gas burner for a forced, hot air furnace having the qualities of compact size, light weight, high efficiency, ease of manufacture and relative low cost.
Hot air, forced draft furnaces employing various types of oil or gas burners are well known in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,516,397 discloses a forced air furnace having a heat exchanger section, a combustion chamber, a burner section, and a flue gas exit section. The combustion chamber shown in this patent includes a wall having an arperturetherein for reception of an oil or gas power burner.
Oil or gas power burners of the type contemplated to be employed with the forced air furnace of the above-noted patent, generally include a blower driven by an electrical motor to supply combustion air to the burner. A gas control valve/regulator is required for controlling the amount of gas supplied to the burner. A control system adapted to regulate the operation of the gas control valve and blower in conjunction with a thermostat is also necessary.
While these types of power burners function efficiently, the operation is relatively noisy. Further, these units are heavy, bulky in size, and expensive to manufacture due in part to the use of the electric motor driven blower and related control systems.
Forced air furnaces have been proposed which employ atmospheric burners. The burners employed have generally been of the upshot type. While the use of an upshot type atmospheric gas burner results in the elimination of the motor and blower noise associated with a power burner and the elimination of an electrical supply for burner operation, the heat exchange area of presently available forced air furnaces must be increased approximately one third over that employed with forced air furnaces using a power burner.
Inshot atmospheric burners, although highly efficient, have not been employed with forced air furnaces of the type disclosed in the above-noted patent. Due to their flame pattern, straight inshot atmospheric burner necessitate an increase in the combustion chamber size of the forced air furnace to prevent flame impingement on the walls of the combustion chamber. The flame pattern produced by conventional inshot atmospheric burners does not result in the most efficient exchange of heat to the forced air supply of the furnace. Further, conventional inshot atmospheric burners are generally formed from cast iron, resulting in relatively high weight and thereby requiring a fairly substantial mounting structure.